The Final Death Of Severus Snape
by iwright
Summary: Severus Snape is dead and gone. Something lives on.
1. Chapter 1

Snape was dead, to begin with. But Minerva McGonagall was certain she could fix that.

Almost certain.

Minerva studied the tiny black figurine, turning it around in her palm, paying particularly close attention to the damage around the foreflank. The tiny pits there showed no signs of having spread from when she had first made the cat-figurine. "No sign of the venom spreading," she told it. "Fused carbon. Proof against even that damned stuff."

She placed the little black cat on the table prepared for it. She'd pulled her little table into the middle of her dining room, reinforced it with charms and transfigurations, and laid it with clean sheets. Around the table were bags and pails holding the supplies Minerva had bought over the past three months since the funeral.

"Neeps and potatoes and bread, sausage and butter and beer. All bought from Cokeworth shops, and the shopkeepers swore it's all local." The little cat didn't reply of course, but no matter. She was just having a good natter to let off a little steam. "Nettles and weeds from the canal banks. Bricks from the factories, coal from the ground. Everything you need to build a lad from Spinner's End."

She pulled one last set of supplies out from her purse. "The symbolism is nice, but what really matters are the materials. So I bought a pack of multivitamins and minerals from that little shop near your house."

Minerva set her purse aside and then emptied the pill bottles into the same bag as the turnips. She eyed the pail of water next to the table and wondered if she should have brought more. "No matter," she decided. "If a gallon's not enough then I'll turn on the tap and use local."

Straightening her back, Minerva McGonagall faced the tiny cat. She pulled her wand out from its dress pocket, tapped it once on the table, and studied it closely for any sign of resistance against what she was about to do. Finding none, she nodded.

She set the tip of her wand against the cat's head and began the stroking motions to draw out the pattern held within the figurine. It came out as a series of lights, red and purple and blue lines like the glowing signs Muggles were so fond of. Minerva drew the lights out and away from the figurine, into the shining image of a man. There was far too much red, a great many shades of purple, and too little blue. The blue she saw mainly in the extremities, in areas where the venom had not reached and oxygen deprivation had not fully set in. The red was a congealed lump in the chest, where Nagini's fangs had pumped death deep into the thoracic cavity. All else was purple shading dangerously close to red.

But in the brain, Minerva fancied it was a bit closer to blue. "Good. And don't worry, laddie. If your mind is truly gone I'll finish you myself."

Over the course of weeks Minerva had carefully laid out a set of healing charms. Now she put them on to the pattern, a series of golden specks drifting through the neon man. Around her dining table the foods went bright with lights matching the damage found by those charms.

"Now for the tricky bit," she muttered. Minerva shifted her grip on the wand, drew a breath, and then in one fluid motion pulled the glassy cat back into its true form of a damaged man. The table sheets wrapped and twisted around the man, but before they were done restraining them Minerva brought her wand through a series of motions and spoke "Anastaino."

The gold flared briefly, then faded. She frowned. " _Anastaino_."

Again, a brief flaring of gold. Again, " _Anastaino_."

Again, " _Anastaino_."

Again.

Again. This time the gold stayed bright.

On the table Severus Snape shuddered. Drew breath. And screamed.

 **~0~0~0~0~**

Steam still hung around the rafters, and Minerva fancied so did the shrieks. The pail that had once held clean water was now brimming full of foul black sludge, as was her kitchen sink. The bags of food and keg of beer were empty, as were the Muggle pills. Also gone were the bag of almonds and dozen eggs she'd bought in preparation for the village baking exchange. No matter.

On the table Severus Snape trembled and whimpered. His sweat-soaked bloody robes clung tight to his skinny frame, and his dark hair was likewise slicked down with sweat. He pulled against the sheets holding him down. Minerva stepped into his field of view and he flinched away.

"You're safe, Professor Snape."

He still held himself away from her. Minerva tried not to hold that against him. After all, the last time he had seen her she had been doing her best to kill him.

Snape licked his lips. "The... boy?"

"Harry is alive."

Snape jerked, yanking hard against the sheets. The trembles in his body grew to shaking. "Dark Lord. _Where_?"

"Riddle is dead at last," Minerva said with a great deal of satisfaction. "Thoroughly dead, burnt to ashes, and scattered on the winds. With no Horcruxes left, not even the one in Harry. Dead."

Snape stared at her, still tight against the sheets, his expression showing disbelief. His lips moved in the shape of the word _Riddle_. Gradually the shaking passed and he relaxed against his restraints. His expression grew blank and he turned his gaze to the ceiling. "Potter... How did the boy survive?"

Minerva smirked. "The fool who wanted to live forever killed himself. And do you know, he might have seen it coming if he'd paid more attention to his Deep Transfigurations studies."

Snape's gaze flicked back to her, then back to the ceiling. His body trembled once, like the spasms that wake you from the edge of sleep, then relaxed against the table. Minerva watched as his breathing slowed.

"The sheets were to keep you from thrashing about," Minerva told him. A quick gesture of her wand untied the restraints. "I have a cot for you in my living room. Are you up to walking yourself, or..."

He was already asleep. She looked around her reeking kitchen. "Just like a man," Minerva said. "Takes a nap as soon as there's any cleaning to be done."


	2. Chapter 2

Her living room was not vast, so Minerva had extended it to hold Snape's cot and the many boxes of books and records she'd rescued from Spinner's End. Now Snape sat on the end of the cot, leaning against one of the piles of boxes.

"It was easy enough to retrieve," Minerva said. She sat in her favourite armchair, across the room from the little display case filled with gifts from studens. "You left everything but the house to the school, so no one objected when I took the lot to sort it out. As far as the school records are concerned I sold your collection to a thrift shop for fifty pounds."

"It's worth more." There was no offence or bitterness or sarcasm in his voice, nothing Snape. Only the flat observation. "Perhaps... a thousand times that."

"Well I didn't really sell it, so there's no loss. As for the magical works, two of your more interesting books I donated to Saint Mungo's. The rest are part of the Hogwarts collection now."

"So."

Minerva made an expression of polite interest, hoping to draw more words out from him. Snape said nothing. "So what's next for you? Do you have plans now?"

"I did not... expect. No." Snape had always seemed careful in his choice of words. Now they seemed to Minerva to be not so much chosen as dragged out from him. "No plans."

"There's no rush," Minerva said. Except that the few days she'd been able to take away from the repairs at Hogwarts and planning for the new school year would soon be over. "You need to gather your strength. Are you hungry?"

"I suppose."

 **~0~0~0~0~**

She brought food in for him, and he ate enough for two without seeming to notice it. Certainly his body was recovering, but the man himself seemed absent from anything he did.

Perhaps something had gone wrong in the healing. Or perhaps the man simply had nothing left to fight, live, or care, for.

 **~0~0~0~0~**

"We buried your wand with the false corpse," Minerva said. He still didn't react. He had been quiet the past two days, most un-Snapelike, and it worried Minerva. "It died after I transfigured you in the Shrieking Shack. So I brought those," Minerva pointed to the small flat case she'd laid on the cot earlier. "See if there's a replacement in there for you."

He did as he was told, flipping open the little case and unfolding it into a display that covered half the cot. Over the centuries Hogwarts had built up a collection wands that had either been gifted to the school or had simply outlived their bearers. Most of the wands in the case pre-dated Ollivander's self-proclaimed 'Supreme Cores', and many were made from rare or even extinct magical woods.

He barely glanced at them. He settled back against the boxes. "I doubt I'll need one. It's better to lie low. Quiet. Let people think I'm dead."

 _Laddy_ , I _think you're dead._ "Have you thought more about your plans, then?"

"I have... an identity. An escape route. I prepared it years ago. When I first thought about hiding from... him. Riddle." He brushed a strand of hair back from his face, then let his hand fall back to his lap. "Foolish idea, obviously. Setting it up was a waste of time. Dumbledore's plan was all we had. Riddle would have killed... everyone. And then found me." His hands twitched in his lap. "Stupid."

A little more venom in his self-loathing would have reassured her. "So you'll use it now?"

"I suppose" His gaze drifted back to the wands, and his hand followed. He brushed his fingertips against a few of them. His hand started to grip one, then moved on. Finally his grasp settled over one pale, slightly crooked wand. "It will do, I suppose."

Minerva had inspected the wands before packing them. The one he now held in his lap was an old one, made from the cane of a rose bush polished with beeswax and linseed oil. She had not recognized the core at all, except that it was something patient and quiet and very clever. "So now you have a wand, you have your books and records, you have your escape route. What will you do?"

"Use it? Run." His thumb rubbed against the wand. "Hide again. Hide my... who I... why bother? Hide again. Or just turn myself in. Get it over with. No more..."

He was slouched against the boxes now, sagging down as though he'd run a marathon. "I'm tired."

 _Dead tired, I should imagine_. "It's late," Minerva told him. It was barely eight o'clock. Sleep on it, and in the morning we can talk more about it if you'd like."

"Yes."


	3. Chapter 3

In the morning he was gone, as were his boxes, and her living room shrunk back down to its normal proportions. On the bookstand was a mix of currencies, fifty pounds for the collection and seven galleons for the wand.

Minerva closed her eyes and sighed. She tried to think of an appropriate blessing or epitath, the right words for the man. Minerva opened her eyes and gazed at her empty living room. Finally she said the words she had not spoken at the funeral.

"Good bye, Severus."


	4. Chapter 4

Severus Snape awoke on a cot in an otherwise empty room. He did not move for several long minutes, eyes open and unfocused.

Eventually he stirred, slowly rolling onto his side and casting off the sheets. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. In the darkness he sat, until he noticed the pressure in his bladder. He decided that must have been what had awoken him. The needs of the body.

Life came down to nothing more than crawling out of bed to piss.

Snape hunched down and grabbed his new wand. A quick - and this new wand was very quick - casting of sensing charms brought the building's protective enchantments to his inner sight. All the protections showed as a warm darkness, a blackness about the structure that blanketed it away from magical scrying. For now at least, this hiding hole seemed safe.

Clad only his worn boxers Snape shuffled through his flat, his new home for the time being. In the living room he turned right, paused, and then turned left and made his way past the piles of his boxes. The bathroom was off the short entry hall, which the estate agent had insisted on calling the "foyer". Snape paused by the bathroom door, thinking. Then he turned back, grabbed his travel bag from the top of the box-heap, and resumed course to the bathroom.

Snape spent a long time in the bathroom, not doing much and doing it slowly. After a time he emerged, dressed in worn black denim trousers and a pristine black Animals t-shirt.

He had no furnishings in his living room. No shelves or chairs, no television, no pictures. Only boxes packed with old books and vinyl. He had no needs either. He wasn't particularly hungry at the moment, his bladder was empty, and he had no work to prepare for. No need to do anything, and all the time to do it in.

For the first time in his life, no war or prospects for one.

Some old habit stirred him. Snape drew himself up straight and regarded the room and its inhabitant with a sneer. "Do you plan on laying about all day simply because there's no one here to push you?"

The words bounced off empty walls. The sneer slide off his face.

He had a cot. He wandered back to the comforting darkness of the bedroom.

 **~O~O~O~O~**

Hunger woke him. This time he drew the bedroom curtains open and noticed the sun. He'd thought it was later. Snape walked slowly to the bathroom and found his kit again. He dug around in it until he found his watch. Only 11am.

Strapping the watch on he wandered back into the living room and noticed that the curtains were open. Out of habit he pulled his wand out of his pocket and went through his protective spellwork, looking for watchers. He found none. Safe in the warm blackness of charms and enchantments, Snape stood in his living room and tried to remember what had awakened him.

Hunger. Actually, he found himself very hungry. Still recovering his strength, he supposed. Snape turned the fact of being alive over and around in his mind. He found it uninteresting. He was hungry. That was all.

Snape poked around the kitchen and found the tiny pantry stocked with tinned vegetables, tinned fruit, and tinned beans, but no tin opener in the drawers or cupboards. Also found was the remarkable array of healing potions he had stocked. Blood-replenishment potions, excellent, envigorating draughts, yes fine, but what need had he imagined for the enyouthening potions or hair-lengthening brews? "Ah yes, the legendary foresight of Severus Snape. Well done, you." The words were flat. He said them again with more sibilance, more venom. Better.

"No income, no prospects, and nothing in the cupboards but tinned muck and old pots and pans. I suppose you tried though. Gave this plan all the thought you were capable of." Better.

Back again to the bag, where he found his wallet. He counted the money twice and estimated he had enough for a fortnight. The tinned foods might last three weeks, and of course he had water from the tap. He could hold out for perhaps two months.

Snape wandered back to the living room, counting days and thinking of ways to stretch out his meagre resources. The room was pleasantly warm and he stood in front of the large windows, letting the sun heat his dark clothes. Some memory flickered around the edge of his mind, but his rumbling stomach kept him focused on the need for something more substantial than beans and fruit.

"Oh you bloody fool." He was feeling more awake, more himself now. The phone sat on the floor in a corner of the living room. Snape knelt down and dialed a number from memory. When the agent answered her direct line Snape identified himself under his new name.

"Oh, Mr Corby. How good to hear from you. How are you?"

"Alive." No thanks to the boy or his friends. No thanks to anyone other than Minerva McGonagall, and she'd probably only brought him back for a rematch of their last fight. "I've... had an accident. I won't be able to work for some time. So I was wondering..."

"I'm terribly sorry to hear that, Mr Corby. I wish you a speedy recovery. I imagine though you're calling about your finances? Are you in Tunbridge Wells now?"

"Yes. I'm calling from my suite above the Salomons property."

"Of course. Let me put you on hold for just one moment, Mr Corby."

Snape waited, his stomach rumbling. During good times the Dark - say his name - _Tom Riddle_ had granted his followers prize money. Snape had invested that money under his false name. 1980 and '81 had been very good years for the Death Eaters in general and Snape in particular. Tom Riddle had been pleased with his new potions master and his own cleverness in allowing this Half-Blood to join his followers, and his self-satisfaction had allowed Snape to buy false papers and a small property.

Which he could not live in, so he had leased out. And he could not spend that money, so he'd saved that money and sold the small property and then bought a slightly larger place. One where he could both lease out the main floor and set aside a small suite for himself. And he'd hired a firm to look after his investment. And they'd suggested selling that second property and diversifying his portfolio a bit. And now he owned three properties which generated revenue for a pool of investments, and the firm was always very happy to hear from the absentee landlord Mr Corby.

Snape was only vaguely aware of the worth of his investments, and the actual cash generated had never seemed all that great, but surely it had to be enough for something better than tinned beans.

"Hello again Mr Corby. I have the basics of your portfolio here. A quick review tells me that I can move some of your liquid investments over to a bank account without serious penalties. And of course we can easily redirect the revenue from your properties to give you a bit of an income, although we would need to discuss taxes obviously. But we're not looking at a fortune, I'm afraid."

"I didn't expect much. How long, and how much?"

"A few days at most, but we will need you in to review and sign some papers. And I wouldn't expect more than five thousand at first."

"As you say, not much." Five thousand a year? Or as a lump sum total? He would have to find some sort of work. As 'Corby' he was a licenced herbalist, wasn't he? His stomach rumbled. "But I suppose its enough for a bite to eat."

"At least that," she said, chuckling politely. "If we redirected more without rebalancing your portfolio you would take a serious blow in taxes. And as you have things set up now the revenue from your properties, after expenses and taxes, won't be much more than nine hundred a month."

"Nine hundred."

"I'm afraid so. You really aren't set up at the moment to generate income so much as investment revenue. But we can discuss that when you come in."

Nine hundred. A month. Pounds? "You've... done better than I expected."

"Well thank you. I have most of Thursday this week free. Would that be a good day for you to come in?"

"I... Perhaps. I'm not... With my accident I've lost track of time. What day is it?"

"Tuesday, Mr Corby."

"Yes. Thursday is acceptable."

They agreed on the time, and Snape hung up. Five thousand pounds to begin, and nine hundred a month? Possibly more, if he adjusted his investments? He felt... Shaken. Thrown off balance.

He had never imagined Severus Snape as _well-off_ , let alone potentially _wealthy_. And now he was. It felt wrong to him.

 **~O~O~O~O~**

His first stop was the local McDonald's, where he battled crowds of teens and a queue where no one ahead of him seemed to know what they wanted. He struggled through the ordeal without hexing anyone, although it came close when the elderly man ahead of him kept changing his mind between McNuggets or a McFish. At long last he won his prize of two cheeseburgers, large fries, and a large vaguely-flavoured sugar water.

He had thought food would help with his sense of... offness. But while he found himself less hungry than before, he found that he still felt...

What? Misplaced, as after a slightly wrong Apparation. Lost.

Severus Snape had no War. He had no duties. No master to report to, no pupils to instruct, no fools to protect. No job, and apparently no need for one. And he had no words for this state of affairs.

 _Get up you dunderhead, and stop feeling sorry for yourself_.

Snape at least had hunger still to drive him. He left the McDonald's in search of something less unpleasant than American cuisine. He walked briskly with no where to go, thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets in an attempt to look casual. His right thumb brushed the handle of his wand, concealed in the magically extended pocket. Snape had not neglected his protective enchantments or see-me-nots before leaving his rooms, but none the less he watched the crowds and surroundings. Without even thinking about it he could rattle off the names of a half-dozen people who had died because they trusted spells instead of wariness.

It was a lovely bright day without any sign of trouble. Many people on the sidewalk were actually smiling. Snape jinxed a car that cut him off at a crosswalk, glaring at it until the engine stalled.

It was a lovely bright day without any sign of a war, and no place for him. Snape ducked in to the first pub he saw, a place with planters hanging from the window sills and a brightly painted sign. He paused briefly while his eyes adjusted, then stepped farther in to the establishment. It was clean and bright, with large windows and well-polished light hardwood, and half full of smiling chattering people. He considered looking for a quieter place, but he was still hungry. Snape stepped up to the bar.

"Nice timing," said the bartender as he rinsed a glass. "We just had three large groups leave. If you'd been fifteen minutes earlier we wouldn't have had a table for you."

Snape looked over the pub while the bartender continued to rinse glasses. If he sat at that little table by the corner window he'd have a direct line of sight to the front door and the stairs to the upper level, a view of the street, and nothing behind him but the emergency exit. "I'll have a menu and..." He looked over at the taps. All the usual plus a few he didn't know.

"We just had this one in. New, locally made," said the bartender. He lowered his voice a bit. "If you ask me, which the owner didn't, it's a bit overpriced for what it is. Not bad, like Summer Lightning if you've had that, but half a pound more."

He had tried Summer Lightning and found it too fruity for his tastes. But Snape bristled at the bartender's implication that it might be too expensive for him. "I'll try a pint," he said. He glanced at the prices on the menu. "Bring me a ploughman's lunch, and the smoked salmon terrine."

"They're both plates for sharing. That's a lot of food."

"I know what I'll have." He counted out the money and some extra, hiding a wince at the cost. "And one for yourself." That would teach the fool to underestimate him.

Well, it would teach some fool something. Perhaps. He took his drink over to the window table and sat in the sun, where he could watch the pub and the street.

Nine hundred a month. Without even making an effort. Four hundred and fifty a fortnight. Over two hundred pounds a week, with no rent or mortgage to pay.

No War, no school, no masters, no duties. Nothing to do but enjoy life. Like an old man with no work, slowly dying at the pub.

This was no way for Severus Snape to live.


	5. Chapter 5

Clinically speaking, an "enyouthening" potion did nothing to restore one's youth. It restored the body's own regenerative abilities, allowing the patient to recuperate from the cumulative harm of life. In many ways it was the equivalent of a year or two on a regime of physical therapy, exercise, and healthy activities. Unfortunately, enyouthening potions were complicated brews of expensive ingredients and each potion consumed would be less effective than previous ones. Between their cost, relatively minimal effect, and the greatly diminished returns per potion, they were not popular among those who pursued prolonged life.

They were however very useful for the treatment of wasting illnesses, such as that suffered by -

 **~O~O~O~O~**

The Salomons property was nowhere near either the Salomons Estate or Salomons Road. But he supposed to an estate agent the name sounded better than The Convenient To The Pound Shop Property. At least his little Frog Lane house was actually on Frog Lane.

The upper floor of the Frog Lane house was given over entirely to the bedroom and a closet that was too large for his needs. Currently he had the bed charmed down to a sixteenth its normal size and shoved into a corner to make way for dueling practice.

The enchanted ring around him threw out sparks - Some harmless, others painful. Snape shot two out of the air and knocked a third aside with his wand. He snapped back to this style's waiting stance and scanned left and right, alert to fresh attacks.

This dueling style's only advantage was its emphasis on footwork. He stepped aside from a series of sparks that struck at his knees, then beat the sparks back with a forceful Stunning Charm. Again he brought his wand arm back to readiness, elbow tight to the side and forearm up to hold the wand near the head. The style was rigid, intended for formal duels, and left the lower body poorly defended. The ring now recognized that weakness. Snape swatted aside another cluster of sparks coming for his feet.

"Break," he said. The shimmering blue-white around him dimmed a bit. He wasn't learning anything new here. The ring's reactions to the style would be predictable because the style was predictable. "End." The light faded entirely, leaving a simple blue circle drawn on his bedroom floor. He placed the end of wand against the circle, like a pen, and drew up the ring and its energies into a flickering nimbus around the wand.

He stepped against the back wall, well away from where the bed would be. Then he focused the nimbus into a restorative charm and dumped the energy into his bed. It nearly exploded back to its regular size, suddenly expanded beyond that with a series of loud cracks, banged off the far wall, and with one last _crack!_ shrank back down to its normal size.

"Hell," Snape muttered. Even from here he could see the scrapes in the wall under the window, and the headboard had banged up the back wall as though someone had gone at it with a hammer. He swore again. "Too much trapped energy," he shook his head. "You'll have to find a better way to earth it, unless you want to live in a disaster."

He went over the damage with his wand, blending the gouges and scrapes back together. "Dueling practice. Waste of time. Who do you think is coming after you? Lockhart?"

He went downstairs to the first floor. He'd turned half the kitchen into a simple workshop, with cabinets full of stainless steel pots and herbs hanging in the window. Rosemary, dandelion, thyme, garlic, and others made for a burst of green in this room, and the scent of soil and growing things reminded him of the greenhouses -

Memory was a waste of time. Nostalgia was a luxury he could not afford. He inspected the window and table pots for soil moisture and inspected green leaves for pests and general health. Finding nothing out of order he left the plants to their business of growing. Contemplating possible replacements for pumpkin oils and boomslang hide, he poured himself the last half-cup of tea and went down to the ground floor sitting room.

His hiding-hole for now, the little house on Frog Lane had more space than the Salomons property but divided that space between three floors. Bedroom on the second floor, kitchen and bath on the first, and sitting room on the ground. The previous tenant here had agreed to move to the suite at Salomons in exchange for a generous deal on his lease, and now that property had an offer at a very nice mark-up over what it had cost "Mr Corby". The firm had presented their client with a list of other possible investment properties, which he should look over sometime soon, and congratulated him on his foresight in selling the Salomons property at the right time. Honestly, he'd just wanted a kitchen big enough to work in.

At the door he opened the little bin and prodded the sealed bags of grit and old potions within to see if they were ready for disposal. He decided to give them another day to be certain they were inert. He'd mixed his more useless healing potions - the hair-lengthening formula, the enamel restorers, the wart removers - into blends of sand and coal. In a day or so he would mix them in with food scraps to be hauled away with the rest of the municipal waste. Plain silicon and carbon would do most of the work of making them harmless, and the sheer bulk of Tunbridge Wells's scraped food would do the rest.

He had not yet dumped the enyouthening formula. He would do that soon, he told himself.

 **~O~O~O~O~**

Potions work occupied much of his time. He'd found a Muggle shop where he could buy minimally acceptable extracts and essential oils, and was learning how to blend them to serve as the bases for home potions. It would take some weeks of careful tending and soil preparation before his little garden produced ingredients of the right quality. For now he made notes on traditional herbal potions and the arithmagical studies he would need to make draughts without imported ingredients - ingredients he could only find in the magical shops that were now off-limits.

Defence practice ate up another chunk of his days. An hour a day at home reviewing his dueling forms, and he'd found quiet areas south of town where he could practice in more space. Two or three times a week in the woods, never on the same schedule, was his routine so far.

The rest of his time he spent in cafes, the library, pubs, hiking through Tunbridge Wells's parks, or in meetings with his financial agent. He paid attention to the places he'd visited recently and avoided becoming a regular at any of them. He never visited the library or any other establishment on a pattern. His walks through the city never followed the same path twice. Habits left you open to ambush. Snape had been in on such ambushes often enough to have learnt that lesson.

Today he tested his defences, both personal and household, and set off for the Muggle library.

 **~O~O~O~O~**

The magazine selection wasn't vast, but it had the computer magazines and consumer reports he needed. He found three with reviews of newer laptops and went looking for a quiet spot to read.

There were library wasn't fully packed, but there were enough Muggles about today that there were no places for him to sit away from the crowd. The best place for his needs was half of a study desk across from two girls who looked to be Fourth or Fifth Years - _Fourteen or fifteen_ , he corrected himself. He set out his magazines and notebook and began his research.

" - just mush again," one of the girls said.

"Well stop boiling it too long," said the other.

He tried to focus on an article about the IBM Thinkpad. 16MB RAM, 2.1Gb hard -

"I don't under _staaand_ ," whined the first girl. "I'm following the recipes. Nothing _works_."

But for just under four thousand pounds it didn't seem to offer much except -

" - burnt the sausage _and_ undercooked the mushrooms. I don't know how I'm supposed to - "

 _For just under four thousand pounds it_ -

" - can't even follow a recipe. I'm a worse cook than mum."

He drew in a long breath through his nose and exhaled through clenched teeth. "Give me your cookbook," said Severus Snape.

One of the Muggles peeked around the edge of the study desk. "Pardon?"

"Give me. Your bloody. Cookbook."

"What for?"

"So I can teach you how to cook, obviously."

She frowned at him. "Are you a cook?"

"Obviously not. I'm an evil wizard in hiding from the secret Ministry of Magic." He sneered. "Of course I'm a cook. Who else would be offering to teach you to stop wasting food?"

"Well you don't need to be mean."

"I don't need to be nice, either. Do you want to learn something or not?"

She continued to frown, but she handed him her cookbook. Snape saw that it was a library book, so he grabbed his notebook instead of writing on the pages.

"You'll start with eggs, because they're cheap and versatile. If you can't cook an egg you can't cook. Here we are, sausage and mushroom quiche. Cooking time, fifty minutes - No time breakdown. What a useless book. Cooking time fifty minutes. What are you doing for fifty minutes?"

"Cooking," she answered. "Obviously."

"Precisely the answer I'd expect from someone with no idea what they're doing. Look here, bake in preheated oven for twenty-five to thirty minutes. What are you doing for that half an hour?"

She opened her mouth to answer. "Nothing," Snape cut her off. "Leave it alone, unless you plan on ruining it. Prep time, twenty minutes. What are you doing in that time?"

The girl crossed her arms. "I don't know."

"That's better," Snape told her. "Now, pay attention and you just might learn something here. That is, if you're not as big a dunderhead as I usually have to teach."

 **~O~O~O~O~**

 _One might accuse you, Mr Snape, of having enjoyed that._

 _And so what if I did?_

 **~O~O~O~O~**

His meandering path took him through the Commons, where he gathered leaves from a feral growth of garden mint. The greenspace was too crowded for his comfort, so he turned homeward across London Road and up too-busy High Street. There was a restaurant off White Bear Passage he hadn't tried yet, but he decided not to turn that way. The sullenness written on the girl's face had not left him in the mood to be around people.

She'd learned, but she hadn't been grateful for it.

 _Grateful for what? A lecture from a middle-aged bully?_

He was not in the mood to be around even himself. Too many images of ungrateful faces came up. He wondered what fools had taught those spoiled children that life was supposed to be kind. But those memories were a waste. Wallowing in them would get him killed. He pushed them down, but could not entirely crush the resentment they had stirred up.

Memory bound him like a too-small pot binding the roots of a plant.

He sniffed the leaves he'd gathered. The mint had been a healthy growth, and he'd sealed the wounds where he had taken leaves with a simple gardening charm. Now the deeply green scent of mint clung to his fingers and tugged at his memories of summers by the old rail track and a girl with shining eyes.

He abandoned those thoughts as useless. Here and now Snape was coming up narrow Frog Lane, and he scanned the rooftops and crannies of the houses along the slight rise of the street. It was a tight street, closed in and with few places to run. Nostalgia and regret were distractions that left him open to ambush and he had no intention of dying again. Snape kept his pace casual, just an ordinary man strolling along in the afternoon sun, but his gaze probed every place an attacker might hide and he kept his head up as he unlocked the door. No sign of strangers, stray animals, or odd distortions in the air that might be dismissed as a trick of the eye.

Once inside Snape locked the door and simply listened for a moment. In the quiet he felt none of that sense of a stranger in one's space, no lingering body scent or oddness in the he checked his protective enchantments. He found nothing.

The ground floor sitting room was occupied by a comfortable armchair, a low table with a record player, and bookshelves, all items from a second-hand shop. The room was not large, and those few pieces of furniture did not leave room for anything else. He had enchanted the apparently small bookshelves to hold all his collection, inconvenient though it was to remember exactly where in extended space he'd shelved everything. Beside the door he had a little bin holding his potions-waste until he was sure it was inert.

Shamed by his weakness, Snape took the vials of pond-green potion from their place on top of the bin.

 **~O~O~O~O~**

Eileen had passed on suddenly, in her sleep next to her husband. Tobias had blamed himself, and Severus had blamed him as well. If the old man hadn't drunk himself to sleep perhaps he might have noticed something amiss.

Perhaps not. The doctor said it had been swift.

No one had thought there was any love between Eileen and Tobias at that point in their lives, but with his wife's death a terrible aging took hold of the man. Already beaten by the lack of work and the shame of the dole Tobias now seemed to waste away. The two years after the death of Eileen seemed like some foul journey to the Faerie Lands, where Tobias aged ten days for every one that passed.

The wasting of Tobias Snape had been shockingly quick and cruelly slow. Those last summers he spoke of nothing to his son but old memories. Stories of Constantine and Darius, Mary and Deborah, the grandparents and great grandparents who had died in Severus's toddler years. Westlake and Johnson and Barnes, who'd died in mines and mills. Clement and Willis who were still alive and doing their best to help their old mate but these were the tales of their school days. And Eileen, always Eileen, who had been young and fierce and yes sharp-tongued but loyal always loyal and like no one else Tobias had ever known. And he'd loved her, and he'd been a poor husband and a poor father, and he knew that son he knew that.

The death of his father hit Severus Snape far harder than the death of his mother because at least she had simply _gone_. She hadn't faded away, slipping away into sadness and wandering tales of better days. Eileen Snape had died, Tobias Snape had wasted away. There had been days when Severus looked at his father, looked at the way the flesh of his face had sunken in on his skull, looked at the way his father's eyes had peered out from their sockets, and seen how a life without purpose could strip a person down to nothing but old bones and stories.

And Severus had hated himself then for not loving his father even in that state, and for not loving his mother, the way he knew a son was supposed to love his parents.

And Severus hated himself now for fearing that this life without school or the Death Eaters or the Order or Lily's mad son would be the death of him the way life without work or Eileen had been the death of Tobias.

 **~O~O~O~O~**

Severus Snape hated himself for his fears, and he hated himself for drinking the potion.


End file.
